Friday, December 30, 2016

Susanna Harsono, my sister, is visiting us in Jakarta. She lives with our mother in Jember, spending her Christmas holiday with us.

Susanna has been having schizophrenia paranoid since 1991 when she was 24 years old. She said she heard "voices" in her head, making it difficult for her to work even to sleep.

Sometimes she acts like a child, going tantrum if she is hungry or sleepy.

But she takes medication every day, making her able to do household works. She is quite an artist, very good in knitting and coloring. I gave her a coloring book. I am pretty amazed to see how fast she does her coloring. It's quite a distraction from her chaotic conversation.

She was born in November 1969 in Jember. She has a twin sister, Rebeka Harsono, who lives in Tangerang. ﻿

He is probably best known for his investigation of the Suhartos' illicit wealth published in 1995 when he was teaching at Satya Wacana Christian University in Salatiga, Central Java.

He was born in Pekalongan, Central Java on May 27, 1946. His father, Harjono Aditjondro, was a Javanese judge who met his wife while studying at a law school in Leiden, the Netherlands. Aditjondro senior had an adopted son, Ali Moertopo, later becoming an Indonesian Army general and a close aide to President Soeharto.

George grew up in various cities due to his father's job --Pekalongan, Pontianak, Banyuwangi and Makassar-- never finished his colleges --in Salatiga and Semarang-- but took his Ph.D from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, writing his thesis on the anti-Kedung Ombo dam movement in Central Java.

In the 1970s, he worked for Tempo magazine for a decade, writing especially on environmental reporting. He later worked for some NGOs such as Bina Desa and Walhi in Jakarta as well as Yayasan Pengembangan Masyarakat Desa di Irian Jaya in Jayapura, West Papua (1982-1987). He left Jayapura after the killing of his friend and neighbor, West Papuan anthropologist Arnold Ap, in 1984.

In 1987, President Suharto gave him the Kalpataru environment award for his works to prevent environmental degradation in Indonesia. A decade later he returned the award as a protest against human rights abuses and environmental destruction by the Suharto regime.

In 1991, after finishing his Cornell master degree, he began to teach at Satya Wacana Christian University in Salatiga. He was my mentor when I was studying in Salatiga. He finished his Ph.D from Cornell in 1993, writing his thesis on the anti-Kedung Ombo dam, a World Bank-sponsored project, in Boyolali, Central Java.

In 1995, he moved to Australia due to his Suharto corruption research. He taught at Newcastle University in New South Wales. He returned to Indonesia in 2002 after the fall of Suharto in 1998, teaching at Sanata Dharma University in Yogyakarta.

He is one of very few Indonesian intellectuals who write about almost every corner of this vast archipelago i.e. Aceh, North Sumatra, Poso, the Malukus Islands, East Timor, West Papua.

Xenophobia is the fear or contempt of anything foreign, right? It’s something that lately Indonesia has displayed plenty of, despite the fact that so much of our cultural, political and religious identity is not indigenous to the archipelago. Yes, including Islam, which came in the 13th century through Sufi traders from Gujarat, India.

Well, on top of xenophobia, now we also have zina-phobia. Zina? Is that a girl’s name? Nope, you are thinking of Xena, the warrior princess. This is zina (or zinah in Indonesian), which is Arabic for adultery or fornication, whether it be extramarital sex, premarital sex, casual sex and naturally, same-sex sex.

Islam — like any other religion — bans marriage between a man and a man, and a woman and a woman. Automatically, zinaphobia includes homophobia. In Islam, zina is considered haram, i.e. a criminal act, according to religious law.

Oh yeah? There are 95 other countries in the world that do acknowledge religion, but still consider themselves secular, for example the US, France and Turkey — before Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan turned first president Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s staunch secularism into an Islamist authoritarian regime, that is.

According to Ahmet T. Kuru from Diego State University, there are four types of states: religious states (e.g. Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Vatican), states with one official religion (e.g. England, Greece, Denmark), secular states and antireligion states (e.g. China, North Korea, Cuba). Kuru places Indonesia firmly in the secular category, which aligns with the decision made by our founding fathers to protect Indonesia’s Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity).

Among secular states, there are two kinds of secularism: passive secularism, like in the US, which allows public visibility of religious symbols, and active secularism, like in France (and previously Turkey), which prohibits religious symbols, hence the controversy over the burkini ban.

Indonesia actually adopts passive secularism, like the US. But as many of our politicians and leaders are so fond of saying, Indonesia is not secular, nor is it religious.

This prompted the late Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid, Indonesia’s fourth president, to say Indonesia is a negara bukan-bukan (neither-this-nor-that state).

In Indonesian, bukan means “not”, but bukan-bukan means “absurd”! Hey, maybe it’s better to have an absurd state than an Islamist authoritarian regime that the likes of Patrialis seem to want to impose, stripping people of their rights.

Incidentally, Patrialis, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is precisely about moral principles or norms that describe universal, common standards of human behavior and safeguard them by law. You’d know that, if you just Googled it.

And you call yourself a lawyer? What a disgrace!

To think he was law and human rights minister from 2009 to 2011. His performance as minister was deemed poor and, in 2013, as a result of a lawsuit by legal activists, the Jakarta State Administrative Court (PTUN) stripped Patrialis of his position in the Constitutional Court. His appointment was considered to be lacking an accountable and transparent selection process.

However, in 2014 then president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono nominated him again via the House of Representatives, as Patrialis is from the National Mandate Party (PAN) and the then chair was Hatta Rajasa, Yudhoyono’s in-law. Nepotistic politics as ever.

Why are conservatives so hung up about sex anyway? Patrialis thinks adultery is the root of society’s evils. Well yeah, adultery involves rooting, but I could think of so many greater evils: violence, greed, hypocrisy and corruption, which incidentally, Akil Mochtar, the former head of the Constitutional Court, was indicted for, as was Suryadarma Ali, former religious affairs minister.

So much for Indonesia being a negara hukum (rule-of-law state). Maybe so, but it does not prevent legal institutions from being incompetent and corrupt. In fact, the reason they resort to moralistic exhortations is to cover up their gross failings. Talk about overcompensation.

Let’s look at what the law and the Constitution are supposed to do: protect citizens. All citizens, including minorities. The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community is a minority group whose rights are unprotected. If the law banning casual sex is passed, they would be criminalized just by the mere fact that they exist.

As in many other countries, the LGBT community in Indonesia is under constant siege. Sexuality has become a battleground for the confrontation between advocates of democracy and human rights on the one hand, and antidemocracy forces, which include conservative religious groups.

The most ferocious adherents of zinaphobia that have emerged recently come from the so-called Family Love Alliance (AILA), who appear to be more mainstream but are just as dangerous as the Islam Defenders Front (FPI), who use violence in their “moral crusade”.

Upholding LGBT rights means upholding democratic principles. Increasingly, the LGBT community has made successful alliances with other progressive forces, championing their cause as part of a wider struggle for human rights, freedom and dignity. This is happening worldwide, even in the conservative Middle East.

Fine, but it’s against Islam! Not really. Apparently there are no clear-cut verses in the Quran that unambiguously condemn homosexuality. Some even doubt the authenticity of hadith that denounce LGBT people. Currently the Rumah Kita Bersama (KitaB) Foundation, established in 2010, an Islamic think tank supported by activists from 30 pesantren (Islamic boarding schools) across Indonesia, is conducting a study of classical Quranic texts on the theme of LGBT. They plan to publish the results in a book in the middle of next year. Should be interesting — not to mention controversial!

The vision of the Rumah KitaB is “the realization of independent, intelligent, civilized and dignified social order that upholds justice and humanity, equality and […] diversity”. Sounds like a democratic vision to me, because in fact, democracy and Islam are totally in sync.

This means Patrialis, AILA and their ilk are not only undemocratic, but also un-Islamic!

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Last Friday in Jakarta two transgender people accepted an award from the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI). This was the first time the alliance had designated its freedom of expression award to sexual and gender minorities —and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

I helped launch the AJI, a journalism union, in 1994 when Indonesia’s military dictator, Suharto – then in his 29th year of power – banned three leading weekly newspapers.

Receiving the award on behalf of Forum LGBTIQ Indonesia, a national umbrella organization, Abhipraya Ardiansyah, a transgender man, told the audience: “This [award] is not simply an appreciation of our work in Forum LGBTIQ, but also of our goals, the future of better Indonesia, in which we all work together to nurture freedom and diversity.”

Indonesia’s diversity has been a main talking point for President Joko Widodo’s administration – but his government has also repeatedly failed to protect Indonesia’s minorities from discrimination and violence.

At the ceremony, Ardiansyah addressed the keynote speaker, Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Saifuddin: “Nowadays there is an attempt to criminalize LGBTIQ people through the Constitutional Court. I hope the government, including the kind minister, will see our difficult situation and support public education so that the public can understand and want to stop discrimination against us.”

Saifuddin, who earlier this year urged non-violence towards LGBT people but in the same breath suggested LGBT people were “mentally ill,” sat silently. This week he attempted to distance himself from the ceremony because it included LGBT rights activists – not the behavior one wants at a celebration of free expression.

The other recipient, Kanza Vina, a transgender woman, told the audience that when she reported bullying and sexual assault to her teachers, they told her it was her fault for being a “sissy and feminine.” Vina said, “The LGBTIQ movement is the youngest democracy movement in Indonesia. We learn a lot from other movements, from religious freedom to women’s rights.”

Indeed, Indonesia’s LGBT rights allies are strong, diverse, and many. As a peaceful demonstration brutally broken up by the police earlier this year showed, they are also ready to stand up for all Indonesians’ rights. The government should demonstrate the same democratic values.

Thursday, July 28, 2016

Fahri Salam, the editor of Pindai, as well as Benny Satryo of Media Indonesia daily and Endang Prihatin of Metro TV, visited me at home. We continued a light conversation about aspiring quotes on journalism.

OLD time friends visit me. We talked about inspiring quotes on journalism. Perhaps, we could produce those quotes on mugs or T-shirts.

George Orwell: “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”

Bill Kovach: "In the end, the discipline of verification is what separates journalism from entertainment, propaganda, fiction, or art."

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Theo Hesegem of Wamena is a Papuan human rights campaigner who helped the Indonesian government to resolve past human rights abuses in the area.

The detention of more than 1,500 Papuan independence supporters on May 2 for “lacking a permit to hold a rally” speaks volumes of the government’s stubbornly problematic approach to dealing with dissent in the restive territory of Papua. This approach has for decades provided impunity for security forces, despite their abuses against Papuans and turned dozens of those exercising their universal rights to freedom of expression and association into political prisoners.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has promised Papuans a change, beginning with “an open dialogue for a better Papua”. But aside from the release of a few political prisoners, there has been barely any signs of meaningful change on the ground in Papua.

Jokowi’s December 2014 pledge to thoroughly investigate and punish security forces implicated in the death of five peaceful protesters in the Papuan town of Enarotali that month has remained unfulfilled. And the Indonesian bureaucracy continues to obstruct international media from freely reporting in Papua despite the President’s May 2015 declaration to lift the decades-old restrictions.

Last month the government announced a new approach to Papua’s long history of serious rights abuses and lack of accountability: It was going to try to resolve them.

On April 20 chief security minister Luhut Pandjaitan opened a one-week meeting in Jakarta, which was attended by more than 20 human rights activists and ethnic Papuan officials from Papua and West Papua, along with officials from the National Police, the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) and various ministries.

The meeting followed increasing international scrutiny of Indonesia’s human rights record in Papua, including a September 2015 proposal by the Pacific Islands Forum, a political grouping of 16 Pacific nation states, for a possible human rights “fact finding mission” in Papua.

The meeting aimed to develop a roadmap to investigation and resolution of a number of the region’s most serious human rights abuses. The initiative was a follow-up to Jokowi’s commitment in December 2014 to seek an end to human rights violations in Papua.

The government has compiled a 17-page report detailing 11 high-priority human rights cases in Papua that it aims to solve. They include the Biak massacre in July 1998, when security forces opened fire on participants of a peaceful flag-raising ceremony on the island, the military crackdown on Papuans in Wasior in 2001 and Wamena in 2003 that left dozens killed and thousands displaced and the forced disbandment of the Papuan People’s Congress in October 2011 that left three people dead and hundreds injured.

The government has also prioritized individual cases such as the disappearance of Aristoteles Masoka, the driver of murdered Papuan leader Theys Eluay in November 2001. Although Eluay’s body was found inside his car, and seven Army Special Forces soldiers were convicted in 2003 for the murder, Masoka has never turned up.

The list is an encouraging sign that the government recognizes the role of the security forces in human rights abuses in Papua and the need for accountability. However, mass killings that took place between the 1960s and 1970s, including a military operation in 1977-1978 against Free Papua Movement (OPM) insurgents that allegedly involved indiscriminate aerial bombings and strafing, have been deliberately omitted.

Papuan activists have also called for investigations into the killing of anthropologist-cum-musician Arnold Ap in April 1984 and rights abuses linked to the Indonesian security forces in the lead-up to the July 1969 UN-sponsored referendum that resulted in a much-contested unanimous vote for continued integration with Indonesia.

The government’s plan to resolve these cases involves deploying agencies including the National Police, the AGO, the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) and the military police to investigate. The plan specifies the need for compensation for survivors and victims’ families for incidents in which the evidence clearly indicates the culpability of government officials and security forces.

Insp. Gen. Paulus Waterpauw, the Papua Police chief, has promised to prosecute individuals implicated in those abuses. The government has yet to publicly disclose a timeline for these investigations.

Papua’s troubled history and ongoing serious human rights abuses demand a meaningful government response to both address the crimes of the past and to enact measures to prevent future abuses. The ongoing low-level conflict with the small and disorganized OPM obligates the government to ensure security for the population.

Security forces repeatedly fail to distinguish between violent acts and peaceful expression of political views. The government has denounced flag-raisings and other peaceful expressions of pro-independence sentiment in Papua as treasonous. Heavy-handed responses to peaceful activities have resulted in numerous human rights violations.

In the past eight years, Human Rights Watch has documented dozens of cases in which police, military, intelligence officers, and prison guards have used unnecessary or excessive force when dealing with Papuans exercising their rights to peaceful assembly and association.

The government also frequently arrests and prosecutes Papuan protesters for peacefully advocating independence or other political change. More than 35 Papuan activists are in prison on treason charges.

Human Rights Watch takes no position on Papuan claims to self-determination, but opposes imprisonment of people who peacefully express support for self-determination.

Papuans are likely to be skeptical of Luhut’s plan to resolve past human rights abuses unless the positive rhetoric is matched by meaningful investigations and prosecutions for those crimes.
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Wednesday, May 11, 2016

AMBER KIWAN: My name is Amber Kiwan. I am here at the Carnegie Council. We are about to speak with Andreas Harsono. He is the Indonesia researcher at Human Rights Watch and a journalist who has earned international recognition for his work in human rights, social justice, and press freedom in Southeast Asia. We are talking about faith and difference in Indonesia.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

ANDREAS HARSONO: Thank you.

AMBER KIWAN: I wanted to go back just a decade and have you talk a little bit about the religious harmony regulation that was adopted in 2006. I know that you have done a lot of writing and talking about this topic, and I would love to hear you explain just what it is, how it's different from religious freedom, and how this regulation has impacted religious minorities over the past decade.

ANDREAS HARSONO: The concept that is being implemented in Indonesia in terms of religions, practicing faith, is what the government calls "religious harmony." What is it? It basically means that the majority should protect the minorities. Meanwhile, the minorities should respect the majority.

It is involved in various aspects of religious life, including building houses of worship. If you want to build a minority house of worship, you need to get the approval from the so-called majority. In Indonesia, of course, the meaning of "majority" is a reference to Sunni Islam. In short, if you want to build a church or a temple, or, in the case of Muslim minorities themselves, like the Ahmadiyya or Muslim Shia or the Sufi, they also need to get the approval from the majority, the Sunni Muslims. It also means the Sunni Muslims have veto power over the minorities.

But there is a footnote in this case. Eastern Indonesia is predominantly Christian. Places like Papua, Timor Island, Flores Island, and some parts of Kalimantan, they are Christian majority. So in those parts of Indonesia the practice is in reverse. It is the Christians which give the final approval in building other houses of worship, especially Sunni Muslim.

This is a dangerous trend in Indonesia. People always use "in the name of religious harmony," but in practice it is a veto power by the majority over the minority. It should be reversed, because the Indonesia Constitution of 1945 actually says we respect—we want to implement religious freedom, where every citizen has equal rights. In religious harmony, the majority has become first-class citizens and the minorities have become second-class citizens. That is the practice which is going on in Indonesia right now.

One last question: Where does it come from? The concept of religious harmony comes from an ancient Islamic practice called dhimmies. What does dhimmies mean? In the past it meant the weak, referring to the Christians and the Jews during the Islamic rule in the Arab Peninsula several centuries ago. They have to pay taxes, but they cannot join the war, meaning joining politics. If they have not paid their taxes, they have to leave the area or to convert to Islam. That is the very ancient concept which is being implemented in Indonesia right now.

Over the last 10 years, especially under the rule of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono between 2004 and 2014, more than 1,000 churches were closed down. What is the logic? The logic is, again, religious harmony. They like to argue that this particular area, either a regency or a city, is Muslim majority. Christians cannot build new churches. If they get a permit, even if they file a lawsuit and win a Supreme Court decision, they still cannot build their churches. Again, the concept is: Do not disturb religious harmony. Do not disturb harmony.

So more than 1,000 churches were closed down, including those that were established long before this regulation was enacted, during the Dutch time, during the Japanese occupation period, during the President Sukarno period. Many of them were closed down.

Also those that were renovating, again the local government and the Muslim majority can say, "Look, you are renovating your church. You need to get a permit. You need to pass this religious harmony regulation." According to the Communion of Christian Churches, at least 1,056 churches were closed down in a decade.

There is another logic behind it. Some Islamists say, "Christians are only less than 10 percent in Indonesia; Muslims, 88 percent. Meanwhile, churches altogether are 17 percent of all houses of worship. Meanwhile, mosques are only 77 percent of all houses of worship. So there is a balance. The Christians have too many churches proportionately. The balance is about 5,000 churches." This is what the most extreme of them all say—"You have too many churches here in Asia. You need to stop building churches."

AMBER KIWAN: I have also been reading some of your work about this rise of violent Islamic extremism in Indonesia. Can you talk a little bit about what has been happening over the past few years, and maybe tell us what groups are leading these activities?

ANDREAS HARSONO: First, there are growing regulations which discriminate against religious minorities, including the religious harmony regulation, including the house of worship regulation, including the blasphemy law.

The blasphemy law says that for anyone who commits blasphemy the maximum penalty is five years. Because they are discriminatory and, of course, they can be easily misinterpreted, abused, more and more Muslim militant groups take the law into their own hands. More people who questioned creation on Facebook got, under the blasphemy law, five years in jail. Someone who moderated a Facebook group on atheism got two and a half years. Three Sunday school teachers got three years for bringing Muslim students to a picnic with their Sunday school group. Those kinds of things happen, especially in Muslim conservative areas all over Indonesia.

If the Christians or the minorities challenge them, then violence might happen. For instance, it happened with Ahmadiyya Muslims. They challenged a 2008 discrimination against Ahmadiyya, but they were attacked. More than 30 of their mosques were closed down over the last decade.

Shia Muslim is another victim. Last year, 2015, was the year when hate speech and attacks against Shia Muslims was the highest in Indonesia.

Another victim is traditional believers, ethnic religions, like—we call it "the Jawa" for the Javanese ethnic group, or "Parmalim" for the Batak ethnic group.

Who are the perpetrators? Mostly Islamist organizations, like the Islamic Defenders Front/Front Pembela Islam (FPI) or Forum Umat Islam (FUI). They take the law into their own hands. There are elements within the national police and the military who side with them, who let their religious bias dictate how they deal with this religious problem.

AMBER KIWAN: Is there a connection to Islamic extremism in the Middle East and the rise there? I read some different research and accounts linking, for example, Saudi Arabia's fundamentalist form of Sunni Islam to the rise of extremist Islam in Indonesia. Do you think that this is true, and to what extent?

ANDREAS HARSONO: Many people believe that. Many people believe that the rise of religious intolerance and violence and abuses against minorities in Indonesia is linked to intolerant Islam rising from Saudi Arabia, especially with groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir or groups like the Salafist/Wahhabi movement in the Middle East, and also the Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt. That is one huge school of thought in believing that it comes from the Middle East.

In fact, two of the largest Muslim organizations in Indonesia, the Nahdlatul Ulama, NU in short, and the Muhammadiyah, the second-largest, they subscribe to that idea, especially the NU. This is the biggest Muslim organization in Indonesia. They launched their own campaign, their own brand, and they call it Islam Nusantara—Nusantara is another name of Indonesia—which basically says: "Look, our Islam is different from Islam that comes from the Middle East. We are trying to adapt to local culture. We have no problem." Meanwhile, they feel threatened by the incoming Islam from the Middle East. But that is one school of thought.

There is another school of thought which says, "Locally, grassroots Islam also has a problem in Indonesia because they discriminate against minorities." This is not the first time. There are four institutions which facilitate discrimination in Indonesia. The four are the Ministry of Religious Affairs, set up in 1946—again, a long time before all of this brouhaha from Indonesia; and the Blasphemy Law Office, set up in 1932; the Indonesian Ulema Council, set up in 1982; and, last but not least, the Religious Harmony Forum, 2006. There are institutions which were developed by local Muslims, Muslim clerics, including people who come from both the Nahdlatul Ulama and the Muhammadiyah. That is the second school of thought.

The third school of thought says that all of this increase of violence and intolerance in Indonesia comes as a combination from 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and now Yemen—all of the wars, the violence, the things that are moving a lot of ideas in the Middle East and South Asia also coming to Indonesia.

So there are three schools of thought in seeing this problem.

AMBER KIWAN: I believe that a lot of people had high hopes when the current president, Joko Widodo, was elected in 2014. Many people thought that he would try or be able to restore tolerance and peace. What has he done for minority groups? Have you seen anything positive since he has been elected?

ANDREAS HARSONO: I actually had dinner with him, and he asked me about how I see all of these problems from the human rights law enforcement perspective. I told him what I told you: There are state institutions which facilitate discrimination and there are discriminatory regulations, including the blasphemy law, the house of worship regulation, etc., etc. He was listening. It was about 15 minutes, quite a long conversation.

After that, he set up a task force at the palace basically to prevent religious violence. He thought that if things are controlled since the very beginning, it is better to prevent than to overcome a crisis. That is one thing that he did. He tried to prevent religious tension before it becomes too hot to handle.

But at the same time, he hasn't solved the ongoing problems, the legacy of his predecessor, President Yudhoyono. There are, like I said, more than 1,000 churches that were closed down. He did not reopen them, including two most high-profile cases involving a church in Bogor, outside Jakarta, and another church, HKBP Filadelfia in Bekasi, east of Jakarta. Those two churches have won a Supreme Court order to be reopened. But again, President Jokowi has not touched those long problems inherited from his predecessor.

Meanwhile, his administration, because of all this infrastructure which discriminates against minorities, already created one more decree in February 2016 against an organization called Gafatar. Almost 8,000 Gafatar members—it is a small sect—were expelled from Kalimantan Island accused of committing blasphemy, practicing a deviant kind of Islam in Kalimantan. Then the government discriminates against them, saying that they are deviant, they are committing blasphemy, and the organization has to be abolished. The practicing of this belief will be criminalized and the maximum penalty is five years.

So this machinery, this legal infrastructure, is still in place. President Jokowi should invest more political capital in undoing what his predecessor had done. It is not easy, I know that, because the world, and Southeast Asia in particular, is not at the right direction right now. Doing it might rock the boat too much. So he is moving pretty, pretty slowly. But I still have hope that he will do the right thing.

AMBER KIWAN: And what about women's rights? I know that women's rights have also been a problem over the last decade or so, if not longer, and women have been impacted by some of these Sharia-influenced laws and policies. Can you talk about some of the trends that you have seen?

ANDREAS HARSONO: A good indicator is that one-fifth of Indonesia—in all of Indonesia, more than 500 regencies—one-fifth of them have mandatory regulations for women to wear the hijab. They have to cover the so-called aurah. Aurah is mostly hair, but sometimes it is interpreted as chest, as hips. One-fifth of Indonesia have different levels of regulation. In some areas, women cannot wear long pants; they have to wear long skirts. In other areas, the hijab is appropriate if it covers the neck. But other areas regulate the thickness and the color of the hijab, and they have to cover the chest, in some areas even longer, covering the hips. There is an ongoing campaign to say, "We need to wear hijab"—many Indonesian women are now wearing hijab, but they say, "This is not Shari'i hijab," a hijab which is in accordance with the Sharia. That is one good indicator.

But at the same time we also see the rise of violence against women and girls, gang rape. We also see ridiculous regulations, like banning women to straddle a motorcycle, because if a woman straddles a motorcycle, they believe it will stimulate sexual whatever from men who see them straddling a motorcycle. Of course, it is ridiculous. In some areas, like in Aceh in northern Sumatra, they ban women from dancing, including traditional dancing.

Of course, at the same time, the Supreme Court refused a law petition to increase the minimum age of a girl to marry from 16 up to 18. Again, they recite the Quran.

Another issue is FGM, female genital mutilation. The government is now "regulating" that. Again, this is the legacy of President Yudhoyono, who decided to follow what the Ulema said, that FGM is positive. Of course, it is problematic.

Another thing is interreligious marriage is banned in Indonesia. It is strengthened. It comes from a 1974 marriage law. There was another lawsuit against this interreligious marriage ban, but the Supreme Court decided to uphold it.

AMBER KIWAN: Aside from the government and leadership and laws and policies, what are the attitudes you are seeing from the Indonesian people and civil society groups? Are you seeing changes in attitudes or any positive signs, like internal activism or anything like that?

ANDREAS HARSONO: Civil society in Indonesia is pretty strong. Of course, it involves a lot of Muslim organizations. We have Muslim groups like Gusdurian, after the name of Gus Dur, the nickname of the late president Abdurrahman Wahid. It is an organization which champions women's rights. We also have the National Commission on Women's Rights, which is a government body, very aggressive, very pro-women's rights, and also LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) rights.

Because of this, I am quite optimistic that Indonesia might not go down in a bottomless well, although I'm afraid that some provinces in Indonesia, especially Aceh in North Sumatra, but to a lesser degree also West Sumatra and West Java, are going into more and more formalization of the Sharia.

What does it mean? In principle, basically it means discriminating against women, LGBTs, and also discriminating against religious minorities, whether they are Muslim minorities—Shia, Ahmadiyya, Sufi—or discriminating against non-Muslim minorities, mainly Christians, because, unfortunately, it is the biggest minority in Indonesia, and also discriminating against traditional religion. This is what I am afraid might affect other regions within Indonesia.

Of course, at the same time, we have the influence of radical Islam coming from ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), from al-Qaeda. The number is not many—maybe only 2, 3, 5 percent of Indonesians believe in this kind of violent Islam, but 5 percent of 250 million people is still quite a lot.

AMBER KIWAN: Yes, it is.

We are just about at our time. Before we end, I wanted to see if you had anything that you thought is important that I missed, or anything to add, any last issues to discuss?

ANDREAS HARSONO: We are seeing a disheartening trend in Southeast Asia. In Thailand we see a military dictatorship. In the Philippines we see a Donald Trump-like politician elected president, Rodrigo Duterte. In Cambodia, a strongman, Hun Sen, has ruled the country for almost 30 years. In Malaysia we have Prime Minister Najib involved in corruption.

Southeast Asia is going into a new low nowadays. The fact that Indonesia is still having some positive steps forward is very important to be maintained and to be supported. That's why it is important for international leaders, especially from the United States or Europe, to help Indonesia moving forward, by pushing Indonesian leaders into the right direction, at the same time protesting and maybe behind closed doors telling the bad ones that they have to behave. If Indonesia can survive this new low in Southeast Asia, I hope in the next 10, 20 years it might affect the other countries in Southeast Asia, because, obviously, Indonesia is the largest country in the region.

It is also the denominators of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations). If ASEAN can move forward, I think it is not only good for ASEAN members, also Indonesia, but also for the whole region, including the Pacific, China, the United States, Korea, Japan. But if there is a crisis in Southeast Asia, like what we had with the Vietnam War in the 1970s, 1960s, it will create another global problem.

AMBER KIWAN: Thank you so much. This has been fascinating. We really learned a lot, and I'm really glad that you were able to join us.